Roger Bootle

Why organisations work with Roger Bootle

• He runs the institutional view, not a commentator’s view. Capital Economics, which he founded in 1999, is one of the largest independent macroeconomic research firms in the world, and senior leaders get the house perspective directly from the source.
• He has been right on inflation when the consensus was wrong. The Death of Inflation, published in 1996, called the structural fall in inflation a decade before central banks adjusted their thinking, and his subsequent inflation work continues to set the contrarian benchmark.
• He won the 2012 Wolfson Economics Prize, the largest cash prize in economics after the Nobel, for the most credible plan to manage a eurozone exit. Boards exposed to euro-denominated risk get a serious answer, not a hot take.
• He sat for nearly two decades inside UK economic policymaking as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee and as a member of the Chancellor’s “Wise Men” panel. He explains the policy process from the inside.
• The AI Economy, his Axiom Award-winning book, gives leadership teams a proper economic reading of AI: productivity, wages, employment and welfare, not vendor narrative.

Biography highlights

• Founder of Capital Economics, an independent macroeconomic research consultancy, which he started in 1999
• Former Group Chief Economist of HSBC; earlier roles at Lloyds Bank and Capel-Cure Myers
• Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee, 1998 to 2017
• Member of the Chancellor’s panel of Independent Economic Advisers, the “Wise Men.”
• Winner, with the Capital Economics team, of the 2012 Wolfson Economics Prize for a eurozone exit plan
• Author of The Death of Inflation, The Trouble with Markets, Making a Success of Brexit, and The AI Economy (Gold, 2020 Axiom Business Book Awards)
• Weekly economics columnist for The Daily Telegraph; named Economics Commentator of the Year at The Comment Awards 2012

Biography

The Death of Inflation appeared in 1996 and argued that the inflationary regime built into Western economies since the 1970s was structurally finished. The book sold widely, was translated into nine languages, and became the reference point for a generation of contrarian inflation analysis. It also established its author as an economist willing to take a position years before the policy consensus caught up.

That author is Roger Bootle. He founded Capital Economics in 1999 and built it into one of the largest independent macroeconomic research firms in the world, serving banks, asset managers, corporates, and policymakers. Before that, he was Group Chief Economist of HSBC, with earlier roles at Lloyds Bank and Capel-Cure Myers.

His public-policy work runs in parallel. He served as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee from 1998 to 2017, and was appointed to the Chancellor’s panel of Independent Economic Advisers known as the Wise Men. In 2012, he and a team from Capital Economics won the 250,000 pound Wolfson Economics Prize for the most credible plan to manage a country leaving the eurozone, and he was named Economics Commentator of the Year at The Comment Awards the same year.

His more recent books extend the same approach to Brexit and AI. Making a Success of Brexit set out the economic conditions for the UK outside the EU. The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Age of the Robot, which won Gold at the 2020 Axiom Business Book Awards, treats artificial intelligence as a question about productivity, wages and welfare rather than a technology story. He writes a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph.

Key speaking topics

• Global macroeconomic outlook
• Inflation and monetary policy
• Eurozone and European economic policy
• Brexit and the UK economy
• The economics of artificial intelligence
• Capital markets and the policy environment
• Long-run productivity and growth

Ideal for

• Boards and investment committees setting capital allocation against a volatile macro backdrop
• CFOs, treasurers and CIOs in financial services and corporates with rate and currency exposure
• Asset management and private capital firms are briefing LPs on the macro outlook
• Senior policy and government-relations audiences working on UK, EU and monetary policy

Audience outcomes

• A clear reading of where inflation, rates and growth are heading, and the reasoning behind it
• A direct view from one of the few economists with a public track record of contrarian calls that proved right
• A grounded economic framing of AI’s effect on productivity, employment and wages
• A working understanding of how UK and European economic policy is actually made, from someone who advised inside it
• A perspective on the eurozone and Brexit risk that buyers can defend in front of their own committees